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FursonaCon 2017
Oct. 19th, 2017 01:28 amSo this past weekend was my last furry convention of the year: FursonaCon at Holiday Inn in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area. It's also the smallest one of the year, with only 297 attendees. (79 fursuiters in the fursuit parade) Funny thing is I think I enjoyed it the most of the four cons I attended this year. There wasn't much programming so that left plenty of time to relax, chat, and fursuit. The local furries are very hospitable. They didn't know me or where I was from ("Remind me again where Delaware is?" said one of them, probably half-jokingly.) but I was just short of dragged to a room party the first night of the con. Of course, with only a few hundred attendees, we didn't have the whole hotel to ourselves but the people from the two wedding parties we shared the hotel with were also very nice and wanted photos with all the fursuiters.
The fursuit games were run differently from other cons. Instead of having all the games as one long event, they split it into multiple short events, one game per event. I thought that was much less tiring. Plus, that meant each game had prizes. I didn't do so well in fursuit dodgeball, but my team won trophies in fursuit hockey. Because there weren't many fursuiters, the parade was short and quick and we got fish tags (for the Atlantis theme) at the end of it. One other benefit to a small con: there was never a wait at the photo room and so I got these wonderful lightstick photos.
Biggest downside though was the hotel. While some parts of the hotel were new and fairly up-to-date, my room wasn't. The faucet was loose. The power socket was loose. Lamp fixtures were rusty. The air conditioner was weak. Housekeeping on my floor lacked attention to detail. They forgot various items and even forgot to service my room the first day. Also there was a musty odor in the hotel corridors and some of the meeting rooms. On the plus side, my room had a refrigerator and microwave oven, which helped a lot because that meant I could buy some groceries and not have to contend with that ridiculous 12.6% restaurant tax in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area.
What would the weekend be without GPS games? I found 6 geocaches on the trip. They were mostly very easy, even though two of them were rated 5 stars and one 3.5 stars. Surprisingly, the cache that took the most time to find was rated only 1 star. One of the 5-star caches was a pretend 5-star but aside from that, I'm not sure how difficulty ratings work any more. The star of the weekend though was Munzee. That area is packed with pins! On the evening of my arrival, I was up to 3,624 captures when I decided I'd better get back to the hotel! I got 290 more on Sunday evening and over a thousand more on the way home, but even then, it looks like I've barely scratched the surface.
( The caches... )
The fursuit games were run differently from other cons. Instead of having all the games as one long event, they split it into multiple short events, one game per event. I thought that was much less tiring. Plus, that meant each game had prizes. I didn't do so well in fursuit dodgeball, but my team won trophies in fursuit hockey. Because there weren't many fursuiters, the parade was short and quick and we got fish tags (for the Atlantis theme) at the end of it. One other benefit to a small con: there was never a wait at the photo room and so I got these wonderful lightstick photos.
Biggest downside though was the hotel. While some parts of the hotel were new and fairly up-to-date, my room wasn't. The faucet was loose. The power socket was loose. Lamp fixtures were rusty. The air conditioner was weak. Housekeeping on my floor lacked attention to detail. They forgot various items and even forgot to service my room the first day. Also there was a musty odor in the hotel corridors and some of the meeting rooms. On the plus side, my room had a refrigerator and microwave oven, which helped a lot because that meant I could buy some groceries and not have to contend with that ridiculous 12.6% restaurant tax in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area.
What would the weekend be without GPS games? I found 6 geocaches on the trip. They were mostly very easy, even though two of them were rated 5 stars and one 3.5 stars. Surprisingly, the cache that took the most time to find was rated only 1 star. One of the 5-star caches was a pretend 5-star but aside from that, I'm not sure how difficulty ratings work any more. The star of the weekend though was Munzee. That area is packed with pins! On the evening of my arrival, I was up to 3,624 captures when I decided I'd better get back to the hotel! I got 290 more on Sunday evening and over a thousand more on the way home, but even then, it looks like I've barely scratched the surface.
( The caches... )
